Is Quayle Headed Back To Obscurity?

January 24, 1993|by JAMES GERSTENZANG, The Los Angeles Times

On a sweltering day in New Orleans 53 months ago, the American body politic got its first look at him: A well-scrubbed, well-heeled, blond young man of sunny disposition anxious to spring beyond the relative obscurity in which he had labored as a junior senator from a Midwestern state.

In a flash, that obscurity ended on the quay beside the Mississippi River when George Bush anointed Dan Quayle as his running mate and presented him to Republicans gathered for their national convention.

Today, settled temporarily in a relative's home in the Washington suburb of Potomac, Md. --a way station before he returns to Indiana next summer after his children finish the school year here -- the question facing J. Danforth Quayle, 12 days shy of his 46th birthday and one day into his new role as former vice president of the United States, is this: Have his Warholian 15 minutes run their course, or is there life -- and another spotlight -- waiting for him?

That Dan Quayle would like to someday be president of the United States is barely in question.

"I've served in the Senate, served in the House," he said to a group of reporters. "I don't desire to be governor. Been vice president."

What does that add up to?

"You don't have to be real smart to figure it out," he said.

But what is he up against?

For starters, there is this:

A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll two weeks ago found that 23 percent of the 1,000 adult Americans surveyed think he is qualified to be president -- a drop of 17 percent from the 40 percent who found him qualified to run the country in a July 1991 survey. In other words, even as he gained experience in the job of vice president, his image suffered.

"I can't remember any poll figures that would be more dispiriting to somebody," said political consultant Doug Bailey, publisher of the Hotline daily political newsletter.

Eventually, Quayle will entertain suggestions for the near and distant future: about jobs and politics, whether he should run for the presidency, and if so, when and how, say political advisers close to him.

For the immediate future, the former vice president has little on his agenda.

After a brief vacation in Florida, the Quayles will return to their borrowed Potomac home. He plans to give speeches and write a book -- "somewhat personal and quite reflective," said his former chief of staff, William Kristol -- about his roller coaster ride in the national spotlight.

There is little doubt that he will be available in 1994 to speak at fundraising dinners for Republican candidates, building up the sort of IOUs that Bush began banking before his own presidential campaigns in 1980 and 1988.

But, says Quayle and those with whom he has spoken, he will take his time making decisions about any specific jobs.

"I'm in no hurry," Quayle told reporters. "There are a lot of wonderful opportunities in life after being vice president."

But if they include becoming president, Quayle has his work cut out for him.

Even after he had overcome the miscues that plagued his debut on the national scene -- the controversy over his service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War, for example, and a not-ready-for-prime-time performance on the campaign trail -- Quayle was never able during his four years as Bush's understudy to erase the image that provided fuel for late-night comedians. And the job of vice president provides its holder with few if any opportunities to prove executive capability.

Even a successful campaign by Bush and Quayle this autumn, and another four years in the vice presidency, may very well have been insufficient to let Quayle repair his image.

Take, for instance, the view expressed by one long-time political adviser who has worked closely with successful Republican presidents and vice presidents for more than two decades:

"I don't think he has a national political future ... The best he could do is emerge from being the laughing stock to become a figure of sympathy. That ain't gonna get you elected president of the United States. ... He's been cursed and snakebit."

So, what can Quayle do about his image?

"He could most effectively re-enter politics with a new dimension to his identity and that could come from a business success or a political endeavor," said Mitch Daniels, a longtime Quayle ally and political adviser from Indianapolis.

In other words, obtain -- or create -- the political equivalent of a full-dress cosmetic makeover, maintaining his conservative credentials while redesigning his image.

To do this, said Bailey, "he needs to be identified with an issue or a performance other than that which he is now identified with."